Remember your demo reel is The FIRST Impression of your employability in 30-60 seconds!!!!
You are right on the ball with needing to know implementation authoring in middleware to get anywhere - there is a lot of more complex sound design that is done at real time and someone who can walk in and not only design the sounds but also design them to work with the game's features and implement / test is much more marketable. When you are on a team of any size, it is very likely your role is to do some implementation.
What you want from a demo reel is a strong message that you understand the creative process and that you can imagine what things sound like and then can craft a cohesive-believable sonic representation of those ideas through your sound design and production skills.
When I review demo reel material during the selection for interview processes - I look for a few things:
1. Choice of demo material - what and why did you choose that specific material to showcase your skills? If you have limiting material, you limit your ability to showcase how you shine. Also relevance to the position. If we make mythical fantasy titles, why on earth does your demo reel consist of FPS military game sound design?
2. Timing of demo material - always lead with your strongest first impression - you have 20-60 seconds to tell the person who is going to hire you what you can do and how well you can do it. Don't dwell on empty space unless you have a good reason to bring attention to sparsity.
3. Do you understand how sound works both psycho-acoustically and physically and how to adjust them so they fit into your virtual environment spatially. Do you pay attention to these kind of details?
4. Do you pick sound design that easily can correlate to the visual material. Is what I am hearing believable in the context of the video and in relation to the other sounds and setting presented.
Valoon has a good point, the material provided in trailers has many opportunities for your raw sound design interpretation. I'd go as far as to say to be really noticed - provide:
1x CutScene / Trailer - 20-30 seconds is enough
1-2x GamePlay replacement : 20-30 seconds - various gameplay elements. Sound design done and then just synched and positioned spatially in your DAW of choice. This should showcase how you would actually design sound assets for a game and thus the overall game as it would sound implemented.
ONCE::
Whilst i can tell you are really proud of your achievement in coding figuring out unity and game and audio implementation. It's very slow, and very simple as demo material to hold a major focus in the demo reel. Perhaps edit it down to showcase just the most interesting bits in under 30 seconds. Perhaps label things you did, with text as you show case each implementation term - like 3D Source Emitter and environmental reverb settings. etc. It may help the audience take more that isn't immediately apparent from the video.
I noticed it was shown:
- 20 seconds
- 30seconds
- 30seconds
Unearthed: If you are re-doing this in your DAW - and are improving the sound - do your best to really re-vitalize the sound rather than just re-make the old sounds.
Regarding voice, voice acting is hard to pull off convincingly, a good way to get a decent result is record a friend while you prick their finger, or pinch them or some kind of emotional trigger. Instead of voice, a relational damage sound could be used.
I noticed your other sounds have dungeon or cave reverb however the voice is dry. It feels inconsistent in relation to your other sounds. Thirdly the perspective of the voice makes the player character on screen pop out from his surroundings - ie removal of immersion. Perhaps if this was an intentional choice, I'd ask why you did this.
Crows:
Interesting piece but again quite slow, and quite abstract.